Bride
by Callisto Callispi
Summary: CONTINUED AT MY SKYEHAWKE ACCOUNT. No woman satisfied him. Except for her. She was to be his bride . . . whether she liked it or not. Hermione and Draco. Confusing and dark.
1. You Are Mine

**Author's Notes**: 'Tis but a series of drabbles. :)  
**Disclaimers**: I hold no rights to Harry Potter. 

**Summary**: No woman satisfied him. Except for her. She was to be his bride, whether she liked it or not. Hermione and Draco. 

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**Bride**  
Part 1: You Are Mine  
By Callisto Callispi

She did not know who she was. She did not know who he was. But those pale gray eyes studied her. His gaze was sharp and it pierced her every movement like knives. She knew nothing. He knew everything. And he kept everything from her. 

"Wh-who ar-arr-are y-y-you?" she whispered. Strange how her tongue refused to form the words. 

He smiled. It was cold. Yet it made him all the more beautiful. "I am me. I am Draco Malfoy." 

"Wh-o amm I?" 

He pondered this. "You have no name. But I shall make one up for you." 

She blinked slowly, her lashes fluttering against her skin. The bed was soft. Rain pounded against the window. Flames cackled in the hearth. It had been a night like this. 

But all she remembered were the flames -- orange tongues licking at the bandages. 

And the blue sparks. 

Then tumultuous explosions. 

_"You've ruined her! You've ruined her, you imbecile!"_

"Hermione." 

Her lids, growing heavier by each second, closed. "Uhn?" 

The rustle of silk. "You are Hermione." 

His lips, cold yet soft, brushed against her forehead. 

"You are mine."


	2. You Will Be My Equal

**Author's Notes**: Why are the chapters so short? Because it's **drabble**. A series of extended drabble.

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**Bride**  
Part 2: You Will Be My Equal  
By Callisto Callispi

"_Wh-oo amm ah-I?" _

"_I do not know." _

"_You...l-lie."_

Hermione stared dumbly at the paper. Her eyes struggled with the words on the pages of the leather-bound book.

"_I shall teach you to read. I shall teach you anything you wish to know. You will be my equal."_

Poisonous heat surged within her. Perspiration beaded her forehead. The symbols, those little drawings covering the pages! _WHAT WERE THEY!_

RIP! CRASH!

Books flew across the room. Pages torn out by the fistfulls. Sheets shredded. Hermione breathed harshly in the middle of the cluttered room. A mess. A mess that she created. Anger.

She began to ran but shrieked as she tripped over the hem of her skirt.

Clothes.

"AHHHR!"

Wings of fabric. A haze of silk. Discarded.

And she ran. To where he was.

Pale silver flickered in the firelight. "What are you doing, Hermione? Dress yourself. You are a lady, not some heathen barbarian."

"H-heathen..."

Bare flesh softened by purple shadows and golden flames. Copper ringlets of uncombed hair. But he stared at her. She felt something in her chest, something like calm and fear. Anger left her.

"Yes. Heathen. Godless creatures." His lazy eyes shifted back to the book he read. "Savages that will eventually burn in the fires of hell. You know of hell, do you not?"

She blinked slowly. The polished stone floor under her was cold. Not hot. Not like fire. "Helllll. Firrrre."

A little smirk. "Yes. You are learning, Hermione. I am proud of you."

Lightning once more. Hermione sat on her bed, visions flashing through her mind. "Helllll. He-ell." The word was candy to her tongue.

But it was the fire that she feared.

"_She lives?"_

Fire ravaging the stone building.

"_She lives."_


	3. Your Beauty is My Sin

**Bride**  
Part 3: Your Beauty is My Sin  
By Callisto Callispi

"Well I'd say that you're a natural upon a horse, Hermione," Draco remarked as his horse trotted beside hers.

Hermione smiled back brightly. "I enjoy this. Why have you not taken me out before on a horse?"

His smile was crooked. "I had many things to teach you first, my dear."

A sea of green grass sparkled like emeralds before her. Hermione closed her eyes, brushing back loose strands of curly brown hair from her pale face. Such a length of time passed since she first woke up from her sleep. What a deep, deep sleep.

"Was it a day like this?" Hermione asked quietly.

He cocked an eyebrow. His hair glimmered like new gold under the sun. "Pardon me?"

"When you found me. When I came . . . to you."

A sound of annoyance. He always got like this. "I didn't find you. One of the men in the village did." Then he rode away. She made him angry again.

He came to her when the sun set. When bruised purple streaks of darkness washed over the sky. Hermione pretended to sleep yet her heart thumped in her chest. He watched her, sitting quietly on the chair by her bed. _He will go away soon. He always does . . ._

But no, not this time. Fingertips gently brushed across her cheeks, pricking goosepimples across her skin. But Hermione did not move for fear of what he would do if he found out that she was awake. At times, this Draco Malfoy was not the kindest of men.

Suddenly, his lips grazed hers. Hermione could not keep quiet. She gasped, eyes flying open wide to catch his hard, pale gaze with her own. He withdrew his lips slowly, never blinking. His warm breath sent chills up her spine.

"It's difficult," he said throatily. "Your beauty is my sin."

And before Hermione could ask what he meant, Draco pulled back and walked stiffly out of the room. She gasped, her breaths quick. A heat she had never before left her desiring for his presence again.


	4. You Are No Child

**Author's Note**: This was due for an update. By far the longest chapter. My treat. :) **Also**, thanks to those who noticed my mistake with the marquis.

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**Bride**  
Part 4: You Are No Child  
By Callisto Callispi

Age draped the tomb with its chilly blanket of cobwebs and dust. It was an accident that she found herself there. No, perhaps not an accident -- perhaps it was a revelation to come.

She and Draco fought again -- it was over something entirely capricious.

Draco's companion, a marquis from some faraway province, came and enjoyed tea on the verandah with them that day.

As Hermione listened absently to her crunching of gravel and dirt under her satin slippers, she thought.

Blaise, as the marquis insisted that she call him, was a charming man. But utterly ignorant. He denounced the book of alchemy that she held in her arms as useless witchcraft and tilted his lips up at the ribbon marking the page where she last left off.

"Pardon me, sir," Hermione answered coldly, her eyes glinting like metal, "but perhaps you are not aware as to how modern alchemy can benefit our society as of --"

"How?" he asked, sipping his tea, his eyes sparking with amusement. He then turned toward Draco, who sat expressionless as he regarded one of the essays written by a former colleague. "Draco, your lady apparently assumes that women are equal in standing to the gentlemen of the country." A laugh. Hermione's blood boiled. "What have you been making her read?"

"I read whatever I wish, sir. Whatever is in reach of Draco is in reach of me. Perhaps alchemy is demons' play, but I beg that you regard it as science. What can result from alchemy? Numbers of benefits for our society. Sanitation. Medicine. They are all the results of alchemy and its practices," Hermione remarked stonily.

Another smirk. "What dreams you fancy. Think, my dear, and displace yourself from that utopian cloud with which you smother yourself. Sanitation, those pipes, all demand labor which in turn bleeds the treasury dry. Medicine, well, who can tell if it's a healing poison that no sooner as it breaks your fever rots your liver?"

And finding no response to that, Hermione hurled the heavy book at the marquis and stormed out of the room, ignoring Draco's fervent apologies on her behalf.

Shadows thickened as she walked deeper into the tomb. The stony face of an angel, perhaps Michael, stared up at her in solemn interrogation on the door guarding the inner room where the coffin, most likely, was in. The angel seemed to ask her something, and yet Hermione felt that she could not answer.

"Your wings are broken," Hermione whispered as she ran her pale hands over the shattered remains of his left wing. Perhaps it was caused by the storm. Or grave robbers, stealing their way into Draco's tombs to loot what riches the dead lied with.

What was in there? Hermione's eyes grazed over the specks of light seeping in through the cracks. Was the coffin still in one piece?

"There you are."

His voice was so quiet that Hermione barely heard it. But she did, and she turned around, wrapping her arms around herself. For the first time since she entered the tomb, Hermione found that she was cold in her thin, silk dress.

"Your manners were atrocious, both to the marquis and me. And now you dare to run away?" Draco's pale eyes glittered. His mouth was a thin, angry line.

"_His_ manners were atrocious. I can not stand that man's presence. That is why I left," Hermione spat out. With that, she stalked out toward the door.

But in one fluid motion, Draco's hand wrapped almost painfully around her arm and whirled her toward him. He brought her face up to his -- they were so close that their noses were almost touching. Hermione felt a trickle of fear veining through her body.

"You arrogant little _wench_," he hissed, the grip on her arms getting tighter by the moment. Hermione cried out in pain. "You dare use that tone of voice with me?"

Hermione felt tears sting her eyes. How was he so strong? "How d-dare you touch me like this?" she managed to gasp out. "Unhand me!"

As soon as Draco's eyes widened, Hermione knew that she made her mistake. She wriggled to get free before he could further damage her, but his grip remained firm and unyielding. She screamed as his hand contacting burningly with her face, and she fell to the ground, tears staining her reddened cheek.

"Get up," he said coldly. "Get up!"

When she did not listen, he bent down and hauled her up by the shoulders. She resisted, and screamed once more as he slammed her harshly against the marble wall.

"I give you everything, and this is how you repay me?" he demanded in a soft voice. And his eyes, though glittering, were not dancing with anger. Hermione realized that her sleeve was askew and her shoulder, in all of his commotion, was bare. Her heart thumped.

"You're hurting me."

His hands pressed her arms further against the cold stone wall. "It's less than you deserve!"

"Why are you treating me like this?" Hermione demanded, trying to control the shaking of her voice. "Why do you treat me like a child?"

And for a moment, he did not answer. Silence loomed in the naturally quiet tomb like an apparition after that row. His hands loosened. His stance slackened.

"You are no child," he said simply.

And in that tomb, where everything began to fall apart, Draco kissed Hermione with his burning lips.


	5. You Are Awakening and NOTES!

**Author's Note**: Because of the progressing NC-17ish rating of this fiction, I've decided to discontinue posting on For continuation of this story, please go to my Skyhawke account:

http // archive . skyehawke . com / authors . php ? no 878

Without the spaces, of course. If the link doesn't show, please refer to my profile and you'll find the link for Chapter 5 of Bride. Here is a sample of what is to come.

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**Bride**  
Part 5: You Are Awakening  
By Callisto Callispi

They ate dinner silently, as they usually did. Yet this time, the silence seemed to weigh them down like a thick woolen blanket. Draco would not stare at her. The candle light flickered most annoyingly.

Hermione did not wish to speak. Her lips still tingled.

She had seen and read a bit about things like _kissing_. The master owned a wide selection of books, ranging from the thickest tomes of Arabian history to the thinnest Yankee penny novels of cowboy stories (though she could not imagine Draco reading those and suspected him of importing them for her enjoyment). Draco's impulsiveness to share his life with her knew no limits, it seemed. He hardly denied her anything, and Hermione's hand fell upon various sorts of books that ladies should not have read.

Perhaps he meant for her to find it, for even a spare silver button did not elude his perception...

**CONTINUED AT MY SKYEHAWKE ACCOUNT**


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